This biography is reprinted with permission from Making Visible the First Women in Astronomy in Australia: The Measurers and Computers Employed for the Astrographic Catalogue by Dr Toner Stevenson, published 1 April 2014 with Cambridge University Press. Her article Melbourne Observatory’s Astrographic Women: Star Measurers and Computers was published in the Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, Volume 26, Issue 2: 325 – 338 in 2023.
Born: 1876, Australia (assumed)
Died: 1974
Country most active: Australia
Also known as: Charlotte Sangster
Charlotte Emily Fforde Peel had a career at Melbourne Observatory from 1898 to 1918. Peel passed the State Government public service exam for non-clerical positions and switch operators (Victoria Gazette 1896) and was appointed to the Education Department as teacher number 12 698 at Patyah School in rural Victoria (Victoria Gazette 1900a). It is unclear as to how she was temporarily transferred to Melbourne Observatory in 1898 at age twenty-two.
Peel was one of six temporarily employed star measurers for the Melbourne zone of the AC but by 1900 she was appointed to the permanent staff of Melbourne Observatory (Victoria Gazette 1900b). Peel was the first woman to be permanently employed in astronomy in Australia and was elevated in rank to ‘assistant astronomical computer’ as reported to the Board of Visitors (Baracchi Reference Baracchi1901). Peel had a senior position overseeing the work of the bureau in much the same way as Dorothea Klumpke had at Paris Observatory. The logbooks demonstrate that Peel measured stars, reduced the co-ordinates using a logarithmic formulae, managed the errors of the other workers and the measuring machines which she calibrated as needed. Peel was selected to work alongside James Baldwin, the Government Astronomer for Victoria, on comet observations. She measured Comet C/1913 YI (Delavan) and comet C/1915 CI (Mellish) as acknowledged by Baldwin (Reference Baldwin1917).
Peel was a permanent staff member and her employment is therefore recorded in the published State Government Gazette. Her logbooks are now in the distributed collection of State Records Office, NSW. At Melbourne Observatory the rooms and some of the furniture used for measuring still exist. In 1918 Peel resigned in order to marry Robert Sangster, the librarian and clerk at Melbourne Observatory (Victoria Gazette 1919). They lived in Caulfield, Melbourne, where Peel died in 1974 at age 98.
Peel represents a large number of women who were chosen for the AC because of their mathematical acuity, accuracy, patience and willingness to do repetitive work precisely (Bigg Reference Bigg, Hentschel and Wittmann2000). The work required adherence to the rules of documentation, as is shown by the archived logbooks, and excellent eyesight. The required pace for measuring the stars, around 40 stars per hour (Baracchi Reference Baracchi1898b), meant that there was little time to reflect, compare or work outside the standard regimen.